To obtain phosphorylation levels of β-Adducin, the corrected levels of Pi-β-Adducin were divided by total β-Adducin levels. All results were normalized to wild-type control levels. For contextual fear conditioning, naive or enriched animals

at the age of 3 months were allowed to explore the fear-conditioning cage for 2.5 min and then received three 2 s 0.8 mA shocks at the interval of 60 s. Twenty-four hours after the conditioning, the animals were tested for freezing response in the training chamber. Behavior was recorded and freezing response was scored for 2.4 min starting at 1 min after the animal was put into the chamber. For novel object recognition, naive or enriched animals at the age of 3 months were handled for 2 min and habituated to the testing arena for 3 min in three sessions Dolutegravir concentration on three consecutive days. On the fourth day, each animal was allowed to explore for 10 min two identical objects placed in the arena. On the fifth day, one of the familiar objects was replaced with a novel object, and each animal was allowed to explore the arena and the objects for 5 min. For active zone densities, LMT complexities, and satellite numbers, 3–4 mice per each genotype per condition were analyzed (in most cases 50 LMTs per animal). For satellite, filopodia, and spine turnover, 20 organotypic slice cultures were analyzed per genotype. For postsynaptic densities and spine densities,

INCB024360 research buy at least five mice were analyzed per genotype and condition (at least 100 spines per animal). For the behavioral analysis, at least 10 mice were analyzed for each and condition (except in the case of viral rescue animals, where five mice per test were analyzed). For all these experimental protocols, the data were compared using ANOVA, and p values were obtained using the post-Tukey test. The only exceptions were the fear conditioning experiments and Parvulin the analysis of adult neurogenesis, in which the nonpaired t test was used to obtain p values. We are grateful to Jan Pielage (FMI) for pointing out to us the properties of β-Adducin to stabilize neuromuscular junctions in Drosophila, to Flavio

Donato (FMI) for help with the BrdU experiments, and to B. Fayard and B. Haenzi (FMI) for help with the immunoblots. We thank Jan Pielage (FMI, Basel) and Silvia Arber (FMI and Biozentrum, Basel) for valuable comments on the manuscript. The Friedrich Miescher Institut is part of the Novartis Research Foundation. “
“Synapses of the central nervous system display great diversity in functional properties such as quantal size, release probability, and short-term plasticity. These functional properties must be matched to the demands placed upon the synapse and underlying them must be differences in molecular composition. However, there are still few specific examples of how the molecular composition of the presynapse determines its functional properties.